Monarchs now 3-0

Published: Saturday, December 8, 2012 at 10:00 AM.

There was an electric atmosphere in the White Oak gym for the girls’ basketball game between two undefeated area teams.

On nights like these, there is always one team that has to walk away with the loss and on Friday night, it was the homestanding Vikings that had to experience their first taste of defeat at the hands of the Monarchs.

Northside improved to 3-0 with a 46-35 nonconference victory over White Oak.

The Vikings fell to 4-1.

But what made the win more enjoyable for Northside, is the fact that first-year coach Chad Novelli is a teacher at White Oak.

“It was an awesome atmosphere,” Novelli said. “I know a lot of those girls and they are hard-nose players that played very well. We knew that they were going to come out hard and I made some adjustments after the first quarter that I should have made earlier. We were lucky enough to pull ahead and continue to scrap throughout the game.”

White Oak led 7-4 after the first quarter and half way through the second quarter, but with 4:30 left to go in the half, Northside’s Ashanti Curry hit a mid-range jump shot to give the Monarchs’ their first lead at 12-10.

There was an electric atmosphere in the White Oak gym for the girls’ basketball game between two undefeated area teams.

On nights like these, there is always one team that has to walk away with the loss and on Friday night, it was the homestanding Vikings that had to experience their first taste of defeat at the hands of the Monarchs.

Northside improved to 3-0 with a 46-35 nonconference victory over White Oak.

The Vikings fell to 4-1.

But what made the win more enjoyable for Northside, is the fact that first-year coach Chad Novelli is a teacher at White Oak.

“It was an awesome atmosphere,” Novelli said. “I know a lot of those girls and they are hard-nose players that played very well. We knew that they were going to come out hard and I made some adjustments after the first quarter that I should have made earlier. We were lucky enough to pull ahead and continue to scrap throughout the game.”

White Oak led 7-4 after the first quarter and half way through the second quarter, but with 4:30 left to go in the half, Northside’s Ashanti Curry hit a mid-range jump shot to give the Monarchs’ their first lead at 12-10.

White Oak never led the rest of the game.

“I think for the most part in the first quarter it was a back and forth affair and a big thing throughout the game was defensive pressure,” White Oak coach Carolyn Ashdown said. “We were able to force more turnovers in the second half and tried to make a run to get back into it, but we missed close to about 30 shots inside the paint, and when that happens you aren’t going to win a lot of games. Nothing was going down for us tonight.”

Northside held an 18-14 advantage at halftime and held White Oak to only six points in the third quarter due to a stingy man-to-man defense.

With 2:36 left in the third quarter, Journee’ Collins and Lizzie Perez hit back-to-back three-pointers that sparked their team to an 11-0 run that pushed the lead to 34-20. The Vikings’ Lyric Levester ended the drought with a layup early in the fourth quarter.

Levester led all scorers with 14 points and White Oak won the rebounding edge 28-21.

“She (Levester) is like our foundation, our rock,” Ashdown said. “We need to be able to get her the ball so she can score because there are times where she can get the ball anywhere on the court and just score at will. But we did have a few other girls that we rely on as well where the shots just weren’t falling for them but eventually they will.”

A resilient effort from the Vikings in the fourth quarter proved to be just short as Northside stayed strong with their lead and only missed one free throw in the entire second half to seal the victory.

“We played sloppy, but at the end of the day we played sloppy and we won and you gotta go home happy with that,” Novelli said. “We tried to target some of the players that were hurting us in the first half and we knew we had to be patient because our shots weren’t falling.

“Our girls that are the aggressors figured out that they needed to be aggressive and it’s fun to watch when they are. We are going to get out-rebounded a lot because we run a 4-guard system but I’m pleased with the outcome.”